Ardor and Fury
by QueenOfTheDreamers87
Summary: The story of Georgiana's conception. One-shot to accompany All The Wrong Choices. Tomione.


_January 1951_

"Tom."

He glanced up at the door of his office as Hermione quietly opened the door, stepped inside, and shut the door behind her. Tom pursed his lips and set down his quill. They had quarrelled, the previous evening. He had been struggling ever since to focus on his work. The letters and lists over which he'd been poring failed to hold his interest.

Hermione folded her hands in front of her and sighed lightly.

"I wish to apologise," she said, and Voldemort quirked up his eyebrows in surprise. Frankly, he thought, he had been the one being too firm, too concrete, in his demands. But he was too stubborn to ever admit being wrong, so he'd pushed Hermione until she'd snapped and screamed and used her wand to send a vase flying at the wall.

"You haven't got anything to apologise for," Lord Voldemort said softly, burying his face in his hands and rubbing at his eyes. He only now realised how tired he was; their argument had rendered him utterly unable to sleep. As he looked up at Hermione, he could see that she, too, was fatigued. Her pretty chestnut eyes were shadowed with heavy bags, and her normally-dewy skin looked flat and pale.

She pulled out the chair opposite Voldemort and sat down. He jerked his head toward a bottle of firewhisky in offering, but Hermione shook her head. Voldemort bit so hard upon his bottom lip that he tasted the iron tang of his own blood, and he licked it away as he said quietly,

"I did not mean to kill them. I lost my temper."

"I know." Hermione nodded and stared into her lap at her hands. Voldemort furrowed his brows and struggled to hear as she mumbled, "You didn't mean to kill them, but you were right to do so."

Voldemort pulled breath in through his nose and let it out with a bit of a tremble. The people they were discussing had been Aurors - four of them who had attempted to assassinate Voldemort as he visited allies in Wales. He'd been flying back (Disillusioned, of course) when he'd been hit with all manner of curses. He'd deflected them all and had defeated the Aurors four-to-one in a sort of wizarding dogfight. But his anger had not been assuaged, and two weeks previously he had commanded that the Aurors be captured and brought to the Regia. They had all confessed under great duress - Alastor Moody had even admitted that Dumbledore and two other Aurors had been involved in the plot. One, Maggie Prewett, had loathed Voldemort for years, and he had been keeping a close watch upon her ever since she'd completed Auror training. She was missing now; Voldemort's Death Eaters had been unable to capture her.

But someday, Voldemort knew, he would exact revenge upon both Maggie Prewett and Albus Dumbledore. In the meantime, all he had were the four captured Aurors. He had kept them in the dungeons and tortured them for hours at a time. Beyond the Cruciatus Curse, he used spells like Blood on Fire and the _Corlapideum_ Curse, which caused the victim's heart to cease for long moments before jerking back to life. Voldemort had employed the Darkest arts he knew upon the Aurors until he had all the information he needed. Even then, he kept going, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction with every scream and drop of blood.

One day, Alastor Moody had glared at him through bloodied, swollen eyes, and he'd growled,

"You may be able to curse and maim, Mr Riddle, but you aren't as grand as you think you are."

Voldemort had lost his temper entirely then, and with a few flashes of green light, the Aurors collapsed in death. He'd felt a vindication then, that he was drawing his enemies out like poison and eradicating them one by one. But Hermione had been furious with him when she learned of the Aurors' deaths. She'd screamed her old insult at him - _murderer_ \- but all it had served to do was to put up a wall between Hermione and Voldemort. Now, nearly a day later, as they sat in his office, he wondered whether or not she'd been right to be angry. But then she said again,

"If anyone would know how to break out of Azkaban, it would be the Aurors. And Moody told you himself that it was a complex, deep-running plot to kill you. What you did was the only way. The only way to ensure that those four, at least, shan't be trying it again." She raised her teary eyes to Tom and sighed resolutely. She added, "Dumbledore and the last few against you will fight tooth and nail to have you arrested, but of course it won't work. Your enemies now are few and far between. And weak."

Voldemort smirked at her and reached to pull her hand to his lips. He kissed her knuckles and whispered, "You _are_ the Dark Lady, aren't you?"

She said nothing, just stared blankly at her hand against his lips. She was prettier at twenty-four than she'd been as a teenaged girl, Voldemort pondered. Her face had sharpened with age, and her jaw and nose and cheekbones were more chiseled. Her honey-coloured eyes had lost their girlish glint, which had been replaced by a steely intensity. Her body was lean and hard as ever, but her hips and chest had filled in a bit so that she was now the picture of feminine grace. Her hair, usually pulled up into carefully-molded curls and waves, still shone like caramel. But there was something about her now, something cutting and vicious and still very appealing. She'd grown into her Darkness beautifully.

Voldemort pulled himself from his chair, still holding Hermione's hand as he walked around the desk to stand before her. He cleared his throat and looked down at her as he asked, "May I kiss you, My Lady? To express my remorse?"

"You aren't sorry for killing them," Hermione scoffed, rising to stand and pulling her hand gently away. She licked her lips, and Voldemort prepared to admit that she was right. But she continued, "You're only sorry for making me cross with you."

She sounded almost amused at that, and Voldemort quirked a little laugh as he said, "You're very right. I do not like to make you angry, nor give you reason to despise me. What can I do to make it up to you?"

"Kiss me, I suppose," Hermione shrugged, and Voldemort nodded once. He cupped her jaw in his hand and lowered his face to hers. When their lips touched, he tasted honey and vanilla and felt a little vibration as she sighed against his mouth.

Clothes were shed with alarming speed, and at some point it occurred to Voldemort to wandlessly ward the door against intruders. He pushed Hermione's shoulders gently until her back ran into his office bookshelves. She glanced over her shoulder at the books and then smirked at Voldemort,

"You took my virginity against a bookshelf, you know."

"Yes. I remember. I was there." Voldemort raised one eyebrow at her and reached to grab hold of her lean thighs. She moaned softly as he wrapped her legs around his waist and drove into her. Her face collapsed into the crook of his neck and she huffed with every thrust.

She was wet, and warm, and tight, and Voldemort thought he was unlikely to last very long. Distantly, he thought perhaps he ought to cast protective charms upon her. But his hips kept pistoning of their own accord, and he was lost in the feel of her.

"If you finish inside me, there will be a child," he heard Hermione murmur. She knew her own body better than he did, and Voldemort reckoned she was probably right. But he snarled and thrust ever harder, his fingers gripping her buttocks as she curled her ankles together behind his back. He heard her whisper in his ear, "Tom... get your wand."

"Not this time, Hermione." Voldemort shook his head firmly and shut his eyes as he focused on the delicious feel of her quim, on the way she was holding fast to his shoulders. Something inside of him urged him ever onward, told him that he _wanted_ to give her a child today. They were old enough. He had fewer enemies now than ever. They had a beautiful home - the Regia - and apparently Hermione was particularly fertile today. Why _couldn't _he do it? What and who was stopping him? Some corner of his mind told him that he ought to ensure Hermione wouldn't be angry, so he pulled back a bit and panted through clenched teeth as he met Hermione's warm eyes. She surprised him by nodding frantically and then driving her head back against the books. She clenched around him rhythmically as she came, and her fingernails dug painfully into his shoulder blades. She moaned wantonly and Voldemort struggled to keep moving inside her. His own climax was coming on strong and fast, and he growled as he quickened and deepened the motion of his hips.

"Do it, Tom," she was groaning. Voldemort snarled like an animal, and his hips juddered as he felt his seed pumping into her, filling her and leaking out in its bounty.

Minutes later, they pulled on robes in the most awkward silence Voldemort remembered between them. He remembered how angry Hermione had been with him for killing the four Aurors, and he cleared his throat quietly as he straightened the clasps on his outer robe.

"If you wish, there are spells that can still prevent -" he began, but Hermione shook her head firmly. She glanced into the mirror above the hearth and fiddled with her rumpled hair. She swiped at her smeared lipstick and glanced back to Voldemort.

"I want it," she assured him. "I want to bear you a child."

Voldemort nodded and drew her against his chest. He kissed the top of her head, smelling cool rain and lilacs in her hair.

"I love you," he murmured, his voice sounding uncharacteristically gentle even to his own ears. He curled a lock of her hair around his finger as she stared up at him, and he kissed her lips softly before mumbling, "I can not abide your anger toward me. It breaks me into a thousand pieces to see your face when you're cross with me. I love you more than anything, Hermione. You must know that."

"I do." Hermione nodded. She sighed and reached up to fix Voldemort's own mussed mop of black hair. She smiled crookedly and said, "You know, when I was a little girl I dreamed of being a mother. I wasn't certain whether or not I'd be terribly good at it; I often thought of how strict I might be, without intending to be that way. But every dream of motherhood I had involved watching telly with my children, or driving them to Muggle school in a people-carrier whilst children's music played over the radio. But none of that is reality now. I'm a witch in the Magical world. It's a different time, even for Muggles. And my husband happens to be the Dark Lord."

Voldemort felt a twinge of unease at the way she was talking. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Hermione swept a stray tear from her eye before it could fall, and she pursed her lips before saying resolutely,

"I want your children, Tom. I want to mother them - I will do my best; I promise. And as for you... well, they'll have quite a father."

He kissed her again then, quite insistently, and the back of his mind wished they hadn't bothered to put their robes back on.


End file.
